Chapter 5: The Hunger Below

A Chapter by PA1

(The Stomach)

The Stomach Market opened before sunrise.

It had to. Hunger didn’t keep time. It stirred before light, burrowed beneath ribs, and knocked softly until it was answered. People came early�"some for food, some for comfort, some for distraction. He fed them all.

The Stomach had no assistants. No vendors. No staff. He was the market.

He shuffled down the main aisle now, checking stalls with a gloved hand. Each booth was curated for the city’s cravings�"sweet memories, savory escapes, bitter truths, sour regrets. He had a talent for knowing what Corpus wanted before it did.

Not what it needed�"that was the Liver’s job.
The Heart dealt in needs. The Brain in plans.
The Stomach dealt in desire.

And lately, desire had become… feral.

He adjusted a row of jars, labeled with etched brass tags:

Validation.
Spite.
Nostalgia (Reduced).

The jars were half-empty. The demand had outpaced supply. No one was digesting anymore. They were just consuming�"endlessly, anxiously, without rest.

The city had grown hungrier. Not for food, but for filling. Filling the ache. Filling the silence. Filling the something that had opened beneath them like a slow, yawning pit.

And the Stomach? He filled it.

That was his role.

To take it all in and keep it down.

But he was full.

Not of food. Not of joy. Not even of sorrow.

Full of residue. Residual grief. Acidic desire. Leftovers from every emotional binge, every impulsive choice, every fleeting hunger that had passed through his gates.

And now it sat inside him, sloshing and burning.

He could feel it tonight more than ever. A slow churn beneath his ribs, a rising sense of indigestion in the structure of the city itself. His booths rattled. His walls creaked. Something was shifting.

And he knew.

This wasn’t just imbalance.

This was blockage.

He paused at the Ferment Stall, where he stored the excess�"ideas left too long, goals turned sour, secrets sealed in bottles. The air around the stall was thick with heat.

The jars had swollen. One of them had cracked. A thin trail of sludge oozed down the table.

The label read: Unspoken Apologies.

He hissed through his teeth.

“This is Liver’s domain,” he muttered, grabbing a cloth and wiping the trail. But even as he said it, the truth clawed its way up his throat:

The Liver wasn’t responding. The pressure had backed up.
And now it was his problem.

He left the stall and made his way to the back chamber of the market�"through a corridor of hanging spice ropes and bone wind chimes�"until he reached the digestion tanks.

He kept these rooms private. No one knew what they looked like. Not even the Brain had clearance.

The tanks were built to break things down. Complex feelings. Old wounds. Shame disguised as hunger. Anger cloaked in craving. Each emotion fed in, processed, rendered into something the city could metabolize.

But tonight, the tanks weren’t humming.

They were heaving.

Each one pulsed with overpressure, glass bulging slightly, metal moaning with internal heat. The filtration gauges blinked red.

He staggered backward.

“No, no, no…”

He touched Tank #3�"Impulse Control. The glass was hot to the point of blistering.

And in that moment, he understood:
The system had failed.
Liver was gone.

And he was next.

He doubled over, a sharp cramp curling through him like a knife. His thoughts swam. He remembered the girl who cried at his stall last week, asking for something to stop her from feeling so empty. He remembered feeding her a pie made of old comfort. She’d smiled, then wept, then walked away without looking back.

He remembered the man who screamed into a jar of rage and paid for it with silence.

He remembered eating his own guilt the night he saw the Heart stumble by his stalls, too weary to ask for help.

The Stomach ate it all. And now it was eating him.

He steadied himself against the wall. Breathed slowly.

If he let this continue, the tanks would rupture. The raw hunger would flood the city�"unprocessed, unchecked, insatiable. Corpus would cannibalize itself on want.

He didn’t have the Liver’s finesse, the Heart’s compassion, the Brain’s foresight, or the Lungs’ escape. He had only containment.

But even he knew: this wasn’t sustainable.

Something had to give.

He activated the emergency dampeners. That would buy him time. Not much. Just enough to send a message.

He opened a small drawer beneath the spice rack. Inside, a comm-stone linked to the Brain.

He whispered into it: “Liver’s gone. System overpressure. I’m holding it back, but not for long. Whatever’s coming, it’s not hunger anymore�"it’s starvation. Of the soul. We’re about to start feeding on ourselves.”

He closed the stone. Locked the drawer. Turned back to the tanks.

Then he rolled up his sleeves.

Above him, the market buzzed quietly. Customers browsed. Traders bartered. Children laughed. None of them knew.

None of them felt the slow acid rising in the city's gut.

But soon, they would.

Soon, they’d feel everything.

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© 2025 PA1

Author's Note

The Stomach has always been one of my favorite organs to write—less dramatic than the Heart, less revered than the Brain, and far less understood than the Lungs. But in many ways, he's the most human.

He doesn’t speak in grand ideals or brilliant insights. He simply absorbs. He takes in what no one else wants to hold: the ache of longing, the weight of guilt, the confusion between hunger and emptiness. He processes what the rest of Corpus tries to ignore.

In this chapter, the Stomach reaches his breaking point. Not because he is weak—but because he has held on too long, too quietly. This is what happens when desire is fed without reflection, when we seek comfort without understanding the cost.

This is not just about appetite. It’s about emotional metabolism—and what happens when a system built to digest starts to drown.

To everyone who's ever carried more than they could hold, this one is for you.
— Oghogho Akpeli